I have recently made the transition from Microsoft Excel to Google Spreadsheets for my personal budget. Only recently had I learned that you can import your existing Excel budget into Google spreadsheets carring the exact same format. I imported my budget a couple of days ago and didn’t have to do any reformatting at all! It was a great transition. Now I can access my budget anywhere! For example, today at school I bought a pack of Peanut Butter M&Ms at a vending machine on the way over to my next class. Vending machines, of course, do not provide you with receipts, so in order to have that 80 cents make it into my budget, I have to remember that I bought them! Today in my computer lab I accessed my Google account and found the Google Docs section. I opened up “The Shipp Family Budget” and put in my 80 cent purchase! Voila! Just one more way to keep the budget more accurate. Oh- and before we start, read about the pros and cons of using Google Docs as your personal budget.

Importing An Existing Excel Document Into Google Docs

1. Create an account – First things first, right? If you don’t already have a Google account, go here to sign up. Also, click on the image to go to the sign up page.

2. Create a new spreadsheet – Once you’ve got an account and you’re inside, find the “New” button on the top left side of the page and select “Spreadsheet.”

3. Find the import option – Once you have opened your new spreadsheet, go to the file option on the top-left side of the page and choose click on it. Under the drop down menu, find the “import” option. Click on it.

4. Import the Excel file – At this point, you should see a box pop up on your screen asking you to browse. Click on the “browse” button and find the appropriate Excel file you would like to import in. Double-click on the file and import it. Click on image to enlarge.

There is a slight learning curve using Google Spreadsheets. I consider myself very proficient in Excel, and I still had to spend some time figuring out how Google Docs worked. It’s a very watered-down version of Microsoft Excel, and many of the functions are in different places. It’s not setup completely like Excel, so it just takes a little bit of getting used to. But it works!

So far I’ve really liked it. It’s nice to have my wife put something in on her computer and have it automatically appear onto my computer. If she makes a change to the budget, that change will automatically show on my computer because of the real-time changes that Google Spreadsheets allow for.

A Few Negatives From Using Google Docs As A Budget

I’ve found that it’s a little bit jerky. Has anybody else noticed that? It’s not quite a smooth as a software program running on your computer. But no big deal, right? You’re only just typing in purchases and reading the data. Also, there are some things I have found difficult to create. For example, I can’t seem to create a funtional “comment box” on my budget. One thing I like to do is have 5 columns and 5 rows of cells combined to equal on cell where I can write comments about the budget for the month. I can’t seem to figure out how to do it with Google Docs.

I’ve also struggled to get the chart feature to work the way I like it. Maybe some of you know how to do this, but I can’t seem to figure out how to select non-adjacent cells. Do you know?

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Anyway- I like it so far. Maybe I can convince you to give it a try. Oh… and by the way- we’re not just going to trust Google to hang on to our budget. There’s always a chance something happens and it get deleted, right? Make sure you have a backup. You can export the Google Spreadsheet into an Excel file if you need to. We’ll be doing it monthly just in case something happens.

I’m afraid that for the time being I’m too lazy to move from excel to google spreadsheet – if it aint broken, don’t fix it

The ability to access your stuff everywhere is a must but it was added to Office programs some time ago – it’s called Live Workspace.
It doesn’t change the fact that you need to have Office programs in every computer you wish to open the file – and depending where you are at – this might be a bad thing!

I have been reading your blog now for about a month, and have telling all my friends about it. I love it because I am a working college student learning how to become more financially stable and independent. Here is my question. I have a great job. They are flexible with my volunteer job, allowing me to get the hours I need off occasionally. I have great benefits, as well as great paid time off. Here is the problem. Due to a decline in business, I went from full time to working 25 hours a week. They are hoping this is short term, but right now, it doesn’t look like it. I’ve been trying to create my budget, and have been updating it based off of my paycheck. However, the fact that each week my paycheck is drastically different makes it hard. At this point, I’m saving to move out in June, and completely pay off my college bill. At the point though, I haven’t been able to save. Any recommendations on how to keep up with a weekly changing budget, and still save?

Cool tutorial, looks great! You can now directly add that vending machine purchase while you’re on the go since you can now edit your spreadsheets on your iphone, android or nokia s60 phone! I do this all the time, pretty slick!

You cannot use simple programming code in a Google Spreadsheet like you can with Excel. I’ve built a Google spreadsheet and now I realize that I need to add some “logic” to a cell to display the text “over due” in certain fields. Now I’m trying to figure out how to get my Google Spreadsheet into Excel, and unfortunately it doesn’t appear to be possible. You can import but not export with Google Spreadsheets?

Arggh… this is frustrating. I should have used Excel from the beginning.